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The Great Emergency 



AN ADDRESS BY 



J. Bernard Walker 



Editor of the Scientific American and Chairman of the Navy 
Committee of the National Security League. 



Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the 

National Security League 

HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK CITY 

May 2nd, 1917 



NATIONAL 
SECURITY 
V -LEAGUE' " 



ISSUED BY THE 

NATIONAL SECURITY LEAGUE. 

31 PINE STREET NEW YORK CITY 






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THE GREAT EMERGENCY 

An Address by J, Bernard Walker. 



■^ 



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If ever there was a time when a great country was con- 
fronted with a stupendous crisis in its history, that country 
is the United States, and that time is today. 

The great war, upon which at last we have ourselves 
embarked, is so complicated that no man in the present hour 
can predict, with- any certainty, to which side the tide of 
final victory will turn. 

And I say this with full realization of the fact that our 
entry into the war has broueht to the side of the Allies un- 
limited wealth, vast industrial resources, a great navy, and 
resources in men for the creation of a vast army. 

Six months ago, the entrance of the United States into 
the war would have meant the absolute triumph of the 
Allies, for six months ago outside of Germany it was not 
believed that that country would commit itself to the hor- 
rible barbarities of an unrestricted submarine warfare. 
Today, however, this twentieth century piracy is in full 
swing, and these modern successors to Morgan and Captain 
Kidd are sending helpless noncombatants to the bottom of 
the sea with a cold-blooded ferocity, the contemplation of 
which would make even a -Morgan blanch. 

Now, Mr. Chairman, I have spoken of the present as 
the greatest crisis in our history, and in such a crisis it is 
imperative that we should keep our judgment well balanced 
and preserve our vision absolutely clear. In judging of this 
crisis we must maintain a just sense of proportion and a 
true perspective ; and if we do this we shall see at once that 
absolutely the most important element in this crisis is the 
submarine war, inasmuch as upon the issues of that war 
depend the alternatives of a complete crushing of German 
militarism in , Europe, or of our having to fight that militar- 
ism in our own waters and within our own territorv. 



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n»ltt.tft House, 



Therefore. I do not hesitate to say that the absolutely 
imminent and imperative duty of our authorities is to bend 
all the strength of our Navy, present and future, actual and 
potential, to the defeat of the German submarines, for I 
repeat, that upon the success or failure of the German U- 
boats depends, for us, the winning or losing of the great 
world war. 



Deliberately Drove U. S. into War. 

Has it never occurred to you what an amazing thing 
it was that Germany, hard pressed as she now is, out- 
matched in money, men and munitions, should deliberately 
have added this great country to her burdens? Why did 
she do it? Feather-brained her philosophers and professors 
may be, but feather-brained her military and naval men are 
not, and when they deliberately drove this country to take 
arms against them by sinking our ships, they did so because, 
after a careful estimate of their ship and engine-building 
facilities, they came to the conclusion that they could set 
submarines afloat upon the high seas in such numbers that 
they could shut off the United States from Europe, and thus 
at once neutralize the effect of our entrance into the war 
by starving out the Allies. 



Can the Germans do this? Their success depends upon 
two things ; first, upon the German submarine-building 
capacity, and secondly, upon the capacity of the Allies to 
build anti-submarine craft and set afloat new shipping faster 
than the Germans can sink it. 



Xow it is just here in the construction of new shipping, 
and particularly in the building of anti-submarine war 
craft, that the United States should at once exert its maxi- 
mum effort. If the naval authorities get the true perspec- 
tive upon the great crisis in which we find ourselves, they 
will at once cease work upon battleships, battle-cruisers, 
aye, and even upon our fast scouts, which cannot be ready 
until the war is over, and they will lay down to the full 
limit of our shipbuilding capacity destroyers and a large 
type of sea-going submarine chasers. 



The immediate duty of the Navy, as I see it, is the con- 
struction of a vast fleet of large, sea-keeping, powerfully 
armed surface ships, which will be sent into the submarine 
infested area at the rate of at least half a dozen surface 
ships of the Allies for every one of the sub-surface piratical 
craft that the Germans are able to set afloat. 



German U-Boat Capacity. 

What is the submarine-building capacity of Germany? 
How long does it take her to build a U-boat, and how many 
can she turn out within the month? Nobody outside of 
Germany knows. But we can make a pretty good guess, 
not at the number of submarines that she is building, but 
at the number that she could build, if she wished to. And 
because she has stated, with very good reason, that in this 
submarine warfare lies her one last chance of victory, we 
may as well make, up our minds to the fact that Germany is 
dropping all construction on capital ships and is bending the 
whole of her shipbuilding and engine-building strength to 
the construction of submarines. 

In war, perhaps more than in any other contest of 
strength, it is perilous to underestimate the resources and 
strength of the enemy. That is one of the truisms which 
are so true that we are in danger of overlooking them 
altogether. Thus, in regard to the German submarine cam- 
paign, I note that there is a tendency to underestimate its 
potential danger to the Allies, and therefore, in the event of 
its success, to ourselves. 

It is generally believed that the submarine-infested 
areas are so completely covered by the anti-submarine fleets 
of the Allies, that the strength of the German attack is con- 
stantly being weakened by very large losses ; but if we an- 
alyze the testimony, and apply to it the cold criticism which 
we would use in any other enterprise ; in other words, if we 
brush aside unauthenticated rumors and confine ourselves 
entirely to official statements, we shall find that the Allied 
governments have never made any definite statement what- 
soever as to the number of German and Austrian submarines 
that have been captured or sunk. 



It is only recently that I have been able to obtain a 
conservative estimate, in quarters where reliable statistics 
are available ; and I am informed that a total loss of one 
hundred would be, if anything, an over-statement of the 
truth. This figure includes many boats which were sup- 
posed to be lost because they were believed to have been 
heavilv hit bv shell-fire. 



Losses Exaggerated. 



For some months I have had a growing conviction, 
based upon a very close study of the campaign, that the 
submarine losses were not nearly so large as represented 
and that with the growth in size, speed and sea-keeping 
qualities of the submarine, the problem of meeting and 
breaking up the so-called blockade is becoming increasingly 
difficult. 



It is my belief that at the time of the Jutland fight, 
when the German High Seas Fleet was driven back, with 
heavy losses and in a badly battered condition, to its naval 
bases, Germany, realizing the hopelessness of any attempt 
to defeat or break through the British fleet, determined to 
cease all work upon the construction of capital ships and 
bend its whole ship and engine-building capacity to the cre- 
ation of a great fleet of submarines for war upon enemy and 
neutral commerce. Saving and except that this was an 
utterly illegal form of warfare, the Germans were perfectly 
right in stating that herein lay their "last chance of victory." 
For it is a fact that, granted a sufficiently large fleet of sub- 
marines, the Allies can be, if not starved, at least so ham- 
pered by a shortage of food and raw materials for the manu- 
facture of guns, shells and military equipment, that they 
will be unable to win such an absolute victory as to enable 
them to dictate the terms of peace. This is the situation as 
Germany sees it to-day. She has stated that it is her pur- 
pose to force the Allies to a compromise peace, and whether 
she can do it or not depends first and last upon her ability 
to set afloat and man, within a definite period of time, the 
thousand or more submarines which would enable her thus 
to bring the Allies to their knees. 



What is the German submarine-building capacity? Is 
it sufficient to enable her, say within the year, to build, equip 
and man a thousand or twelve hundred boats? Nobody out- 
side Germany • can answer that question; but I believe that 
she is probably well able to do this, provided, of course, 
that she is not herself brought to her knees through collapse 
of her finances, through starvation, or by the absolute over- 
throw of her armies. 



Standard Type of Craft. 



Of course, the only plan by w^hich Germany could build 
a thousand submarines in a year, would be by what has 
come to be known as the manufacturing method, of which 
a notable example is found in the great Ford plant at 
Detroit. It is pretty safe to say that she has adopted a 
standard type of craft, the details of w T hich are based upon 
the experience of the past two and a half years, and that she 
has enlisted the whole of her shipbuilding plants, public 
and private, and a corresponding number of her engine- 
building firms, in this work. 



" I have made investigation of the capacity of the German 
yards as regards building ways, and it discloses the inter- 
esting fact that, without'" laying" down any additional ways, 
she could have under construction at any given time about 
530 submarines of the size cf the U-53 which came to New- 
port last year. The 800-ton submarine requires about 30 
feet of clear width in order to allow a working space around 
the hull, and its length is something under 250 feet. Each 
of the three 625-foot dry-docks at Wilhelmshaven, for in- 
stance, would permit of the construction of six submarines 
on its floor, and eight boats could be constructed in each of 
the larger docks, 822 feet in length. Also the floating docks, 
of which the Germans have so many, would form excellent 
building ways. The smaller dry-docks, 500 feet or less in 
length, and the floating docks would take two, three or four 
submarines, as the case might be. Moreover, ways suitable 
for submarine construction- can be built rapidly on foreshore 
or riverbank, and the actual shipping -and dock-yard capa- 
city, so far as building ways is concerned, could quickly be 



6 



doubled. If the Germans thought fit, they could have a 
thousand submarines under construction at the same time. 



The limiting factor as to time-capacity, however, would 
not be the provision of ways, or even the construction of 
the hulls, but rather the rapid construction of the internal 
equipment.. Of this the engines would present the least 
difficulty; for Germany is the great Diesel-engine country, 
and if they extended themselves in a concerted effort of this 
kind, the leading h^avy-oil engine builders, such as Krupps, 
the Emden Works, the Augsburg Works and the Neurem- 
burg Works, reinforced by less known firms and the large 
number of engineering plants which could be requisitioned 
for this work, would be well able to take care ,of the demand. 
The principal difficulty would be to supply the special ap- 
paratus in. the. way of periscopes, gyroscopic compasses and 
the other mechanical details, which must be of the very 
finest workmanship and require special knowledge and skill. 
Germany, however, is famous for her optical work, and un- 
less there was a shortage of the materials required, the 
instrument makers should be able to keep pace with the 
shipbuilder and the builder of engines. 



More than 200 Afloat. 



As to the time for construction, one large shipbuilding 
firm in this country has assured me that if its plant were 
doing nothing else, it could turn out a submarine of the 
German type in five months time. Our Naval Construction 
Corps estimates that it would take seven months. If Ger- 
many is concentrating her whole shipbuilding resource upon 
the task, I believe that six months might be taken as a fair 
average. 

The Central Powers may have two hundred submarines 
afloat, (and I think it is possible that they have many more 
than that) and if, as is more than likely, they have some five 
hundred on the ways at the present time, this would mean 
that in six months they would have seven hundred U-boats 
available, and twelve hundred by next Spring. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




018 465 861 6 # 

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But the crews? The German naval personnel numuers 
over 150,000 men. Her idle battleships can supply all the 
men required to man the submarines as they are succes- 
sively set afloat. 



Here, as I see it, is the immediate danger point in this 
great conflict into which we have now entered. It is here 
that we should apply, and should at once apply, our whole 
effort. If we refuse to do this, and elect to fight a purely 
defensive war, and the Allies should have to make a peace 
favorable to Germany, we may ultimately find ourselves 
face to face with the High-Seas Fleet of Germany, and the 
veteran armies, ten millions strong, of the four nations of 
the Central Powers. 



Let us then be wise and assume the worst, which is that 
Germany is able to build, and is now building, submarines 
at the rate of a hundred a month and a thousand to twelve 
hundred a year. If that is so, it will explain the recent rapid 
increase in the number of sinkings. If that is so, it means 
that unless we, in common with the Allies, outbuild Ger- 
many in destroyers and fast submarine chasers, she is in a 
fair way to make good her boast and force an inconclusive 
peace upon the Great Alliance, to which we form the latest 
addition. 




Hollinger Corp. 
P H8.5 



